Dora Wordsworth

Dorothy "Dora" Wordsworth[1] (16 August 1804 – 9 July 1847) was the daughter of poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and his wife Mary Hutchinson. Her infancy inspired William Wordsworth to write "Address to My Infant Daughter"[2] in her honour. As an adult, she was further immortalised by him in the 1828 poem "The Triad",[3] along with Edith Southey[4] and Sara Coleridge, daughters of her father's fellow Lake Poets. In 1843, at the age of 39, Dora Wordsworth married Edward Quillinan. While her father initially opposed the marriage, the "temperate but persistent pressure" exerted by Isabella Fenwick, a close family friend, convinced him to relent.[5]

Dora Wordsworth
Born
Dorothy Wordsworth

(1804-08-16)16 August 1804
Died9 July 1847(1847-07-09) (aged 42)
Resting placeSt Oswald's Church, Grasmere, Cumbria, England
Parent(s)William Wordsworth
Mary Hutchinson

Throughout her life, Wordsworth formed intense romantic attachments to both men and women, the most significant being her friendship with Maria Jane Jewsbury.[4] Another close friend was Maria Kinnaird, adoptive daughter of Richard "Conversation" Sharp and the future wife of Thomas Drummond. Wordsworth and Kinnaird were friends from their teenage years and some of their correspondence has survived.[6]

Described by her aunt and namesake Dorothy Wordsworth as "at times very beautiful",[7] Dora Wordsworth was devoted to her father and a significant influence on his poetry. Their relationship was particularly close, with Coleridge's son Hartley describing how she "almost adored" him in an 1830 letter.[8] However, Wordsworth also had literary abilities of her own, publishing a travel journal. Sara Coleridge complained after Wordsworth's death that her father's demands on her "frustrated a real talent".[9]

Wordsworth died of tuberculosis at her parents' home, and is buried in the graveyard of St Oswald's Church, Grasmere, Cumbria, along with her parents and siblings, aunt Sarah Hutchinson, and Hartley Coleridge, son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.[10] After her death, her distraught father (who had already lost two of his children to illness), planted hundreds of daffodils in her memory in a field beside St. Mary's Church, Rydal.[11] The site, Dora's Field, where daffodils are still cultivated today is now owned by the National Trust.[12]

References
  1. "England, Births and Christenings, 1538–1975," index, FamilySearch (accessed 23 Aug 2012), Dorothy Wordsworth, 16 Sep 1804; citing reference, FHL microfilm 97368.
  2. Wordsworth, William. "Address to my infant daughter, Dora". Bartleby.com. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  3. Furr, Derek (2005). "The Perfect Match: Wordsworth's 'The Triad' and Coleridge's 'Garden of Boccacio' in Context". Cardiff University. Archived from the original on 1 May 2006.
  4. Jones, Katherine, Introduction to the Passionate Sisterhood
  5. Taylor, Henry (1885). The Autobiography of Henry Taylor, Volume 1. London: Longmans, Green and Co. p. 337.
  6. MS University Library, Davis, California.
    also, reproduced with permission in Knapman, D. - Conversation Sharp - The Biography of a London Gentleman, Richard Sharp (1759–1835), in Letters, Prose and Verse. [Private Publication, 2004). Available at British Library.
  7. Dorothy Wordsworth to Jane Marshall, letter dated 19 December 1809, The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Ed. Ernest de Selincourt. 2 parts. Part 1: The Middle Years, 1806–1811. Revised by Mary Moorman. Part 2: The Middle Years, 1812–1820. Revised by Mary Moorman and Alan G. Hill.
  8. Hartley Coleridge, Letters, 112 (30 August 1830).
  9. Introduction to Letters of Dora Wordsworth, 11. The travel journal is Journal of a Few Months' Residence in Portugal, and Glimpses of the South of Spain, 2 vols. (London: Edward Moxon, 1847).
  10. Poets' Graves, William Wordsworth
  11. St Mary's Church, Rydal Archived 9 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  12. Dora's Field with picture Archived 10 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
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